


sweater

by CrazyPrepared (writerofberk)



Series: have yourself a merry little christmas [4]
Category: Trolls (Movies 2016 2020)
Genre: Gen, THE SNACK PACK LOVES BRANCH AND BRANCH LOVES THE SNACK PACK AND NO I DO NOT TAKE CRITICISM!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28093533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerofberk/pseuds/CrazyPrepared
Summary: "It's a Snack Pack Christmas tradition," Chenille says."And," Satin adds, "you're part of the Pack now too, Branch."
Series: have yourself a merry little christmas [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053290
Comments: 25
Kudos: 36





	sweater

Branch isn't even halfway in the door before Poppy rushes over to him and throws her arms around him in a hug so tight, it knocks the breath out of him.

(But Poppy _always_ knocks the breath out of him. She doesn't need a damn thing to help her with that.)

"Branch!" she squeals in his ear, loud and excited like she's happy to see him, and he has to hide his smile in the soft, warm crook of her shoulder, because he can see the Snack Pack behind her, sprawled out on her fuzzy pink carpet and smirking at him and—

Wait.

_What_?

Branch blinks and pulls back a little, because he doesn't actually believe his eyes right now, and he's _got_ to get a better look to be sure. "Uh, what are you guys _wearing_?"

Smidge, draped in a shapeless green-and-gold sack big enough to swallow her tiny frame, sniggers into her own fist. Cooper, dressed in some sort of red-and-silver atrocity, and Guy Diamond, in white so bright it hurts to look at him, let out wild bursts of laughter.

But Chenille, in warm shades of red and gold to match her sister, tosses him a sharp smirk. "Well! Funny you should ask."

Branch isn't sure what sets off the alarm bell in the back of his brain, but damn if it's not blaring like a horn all of a sudden. "Why?"

Chenille arches a brow at Poppy. "You wanna break it to him?"

"Of _course_!" Poppy says.

"Break _what_ to me?" Branch says warily. 

But she just bounces back to beam at him, brighter than the sun, and spreads her arms wide, showing off the red-and-green monstrosity wrapped around her, where a dark blue Christmas tree, with plastic googly eyes glued all over, stands proudly on the front. It is, bar none, the ugliest thing he has ever seen in his entire life. "What do you think? Do you like it?"

He can't see what this has to do with whatever Chenille meant, but he tells her the truth anyway. "Not even a little."

Poppy giggles (Branch's stomach does a funny little flip at the sound). "Of course not!" Which is the last thing he expected to come out of her mouth. "It's an ugly Christmas sweater!"

If he's supposed to know what that is, he's not sorry to say he doesn't. "A _what_?"

"It's a Christmas tradition!" Biggie, in a slightly less horrible sweater of his own (red-and-white stripes, like a candy cane) crushes Mr. Dinkles to his chest and smiles warmly up at Branch from where he's settled on the floor. "Well, it's a Snack Pack Christmas tradition," he amends. "Every year, Satin and Chenille make us all these lovely group Christmas sweaters!"

" _Ugly_ Christmas sweaters," Chenille breaks in, with a little shudder.

Satin nods, tugging lightly at the hem of her own pullover with a little grimace. "Only true loyalty could get us to put these on."

Poppy giggles again. "But! We stay warm all winter, _and_ we celebrate the beauty and magic of our unbreakable friendship!" She claps a hand to her heart. "It's a win-win!"

"Sure," Branch says, dryly, because he can't say _that sounds nothing like a win-win, that actually sounds closer to public humiliation_. "Looks like it."

Maybe Satin misses the sarcasm—or maybe she just pretends it's not there at all—because she glances up at him with a grin on her face. "Glad you think so, Branch."

"Because," Chenille adds, with that snarky little smile still playing at the edges of her purple-lipstick mouth, "it's a _Snack_ _Pack_ tradition."

" _And_ ," Satin jumps in, just before she pulls an _entire_ _sweater_ out from behind her back, and holds it up for him to see, " _you're_ part of the Pack now, too."

_Oh_.

That's—

That's not where Branch thought this was going.

Not even a little.

Not at all.

_Is_ he part of the Snack Pack now? Is that what he is? He looks blankly from Satin to Chenille to Poppy, and he waits for this to make some kind of sense—he waits for Satin to laugh it off, to tell him she's just kidding, it's just a joke, she didn't _mean_ it, but the quiet stretches on, longer and longer and longer, and she never does.

It looks like, maybe, Satin is serious about this.

It looks like, maybe, they're _all_ serious about this. It looks like they all really mean it. _You're part of the Pack now,_ Satin said, and he's never thought about it like that before, he's never thought he's—

"Oh," he says, numbly, "I _am_?"

The quiet lasts about a half second longer before Smidge lets out a loud, inelegant snort. "Uh, yeah, _duh_."

"Of course!" Biggie smiles. "You saved us from the Bergens! You stood by us no matter how dangerous it got! You're a true friend, Branch!"

"Yeah, you're pretty cool," DJ Suki clicks a finger gun at him. "You really grew on us."

"Like a fungus," Chenille nods.

"No!" Satin swats at her sister. "Like a flower! Of _friendship_!"

Poppy laughs. "Yeah, Branch, you're our friend! Sorry, but you're stuck with us. Forever. We kinda permanently bonded with you in Bergentown."

" _Bonded_ with him?" Guy scoffs. " _Adopted_ him, more like."

Branch has a comeback for that. He definitely has a comeback for that, but what tumbles out of his mouth is just a blank little _oh, okay,_ which is nowhere near a comeback for anything.

"Come on!" Satin gets to her feet and holds the sweater up a little higher. "Come here and put it on! We want to see you in it!"

"You do?" Branch says doubtfully, but he comes over and he takes the sweater from her anyway. He still thinks this might be some weird joke, but Satin said _you're part of the Pack now_ and Poppy said _you're our friend_ , so he takes off his jacket and he pulls the sweater on over his head.

It's ugly.

It's _horrible_ , it's even worse than what Poppy got—it's a dark, deep blue with an awful reindeer splashed on the front, his bright red nose alight, and it's the most obnoxious, atrocious thing he's ever seen in his life and he stares down at it to hide the stupid smile blooming on his face.

It's his new favorite sweater.

**Author's Note:**

> ON GOD we're going to see Branch bonding with the Snack Pack. on god. i will fill up the tag myself if i have to!!! 
> 
> also, this has nothing to do with anything but Guy's little comment about "we adopted Branch in Bergentown" is ABSOLUTELY true, you know those jokes about how introverts only make friends because extroverts adopt them??? it is absolutely true, Branch was adopted by a group of extroverts, that's how he has friends now. i don't take criticism.


End file.
